Concerning
the Symbolism of Self -Sacrifice,
and
Crucifixion contained in the
5
=
6° Grade
By
G. H. Frater D.D.C.F.
This
lecture was delivered on Good Friday, March 3st, 1893, to the Adepti in
College Assembled.’
Dealing
first of all with the diagrams in the First Order and proceeding upwards, it
will be noticed that in the lowest Grade in the Outer (o°=o°) there are no
diagrams properly so called, but that on the two Pillars is depicted the
symbolism of the passage of the Soul from the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead;
this being as it were a synthetical aspect to be developed and explained
with the advance of the candidate through the various stages.
After
the first Grade comes the 1° = 10°, where we find the first form of the
Sephiroth in the Tree of Life;—this is the representation of the Flaming
Sword descending, but it is not until the 2° =9° comes that we begin to
find the actual symbolism of self sacrifice.
The
2°=9° Altar Diagram, then, represents the Serpent of Wisdom twined through
the Paths. In the 4° =7° Grade,
however, you are shown the same Serpent, its representation being that of
the Serpent Nechushtan. This was the Serpent of Brass that Moses made in the
Wilderness, and which was turned around the central Pillar of Mildness,—having
three cross bars upon it,—representing a species of triple cross.
Dealing
now with the Altar Diagram of the 3°=8° Grade, it will be seen that Adam
is the Tiphereth part: wherein he is extended. That is to say that the form
of the man is projected from there.
The
figure of Eve stands in Malkuth in the form of the Supporter.
The
first ideal form of the Man is in Adam Kadmon—behind the Kether form and,
as it were, the prototype of the Tiphereth form. This Tiphereth answers to
the letter Vau of the Holy Name, as representing the Prince. The letter Vau
also represents the number Six and Adam was created on the Sixth Day, for
Tiphereth is the symbol of the Creation. Furthermore, the Hexagram consists
of the two forms Fire and Water;—i.e. the ideal Fire and the ideal Water;
the Spirit and the Water of Creation,—the spiritual Ether and the Ethereal
Fire (the Fire of the Holy Spirit). Thus, in the Creation the Man is
extended from Tiphereth i.e. the moment Adam is created, that is the
beginning of the reflection of the lower Triad, and, finally, of Malkuth.
Eve is the synthesis of Creation and represents the Mother of Life, as the
name ChaVaH is. The 3°=8° diagram thus represents the establishment of
life, i.e., created life, and the Good and Evil is represented in Malkuth,
and it is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because it is the balance
point between Good and Evil: for in the material body we are placed to give
the victory to which we will. Hence the significance of the words of the
Serpent, ‘Ye shall be as Gods, knowing Good and Evil’. But the knowledge
of Evil brought with it the descent into the Qlipoth, and although Malkuth
is directly involved in the ‘fall’, the Sephiroth immediately above
cannot be said to have actually entered into the knowledge of Evil.
Therefore in the allegorical account of the Creation in Genesis, it is said
that Man is checked from putting forth his hand to take of the Tree of Life,
so as not to involve the higher Sephiroth in the ‘Fall’, which, (he
being unbalanced in himself) would only have precipitated disaster.
In
the 4° =
7°
diagram we find represented the fall and the consequent rise of the
dragon, which in the 3° = 80 Grade
is represented coiled beneath Malkuth in the Kingdom of the Shells; but it
only raises its head to the Sephiroth by right of the Crowns of the Kings of
Edom.
These
latter represent the Worlds of unbalanced force, before the Creation is
established. They furthermore symbolize the places of the Sephiroth which
are hollowed and before the light fills the cavities (The Light which comes
down and fills the cavities is to be found allegorically set forth in the
story of the usurpation of the younger brother in the story of Esau and
Jacob). ‘Before all things were the Waters, and the Darkness, and the
Gates of the land of Night’. Note also the War of the Titans who rise and
fight against Jupiter.
The
Edomite Kings, therefore, are not altogether evil, but they are partly
connected with Evil. They are the forces of restriction.
The
result, therefore, on a higher plane, in the Tree, is that the Great Serpent
rises to Daath, and if the Four Worlds be placed upon the Tree itself, it
will be observed that the cutting off by the Serpent is between Yetzirah and
Briah. Thus Evil cannot arise into the World of Briah, or indeed transcend
the limits of Yetzirah. But if we seek for the correspondence of Evil in the
Worlds of Briah and Atziluth, it will be found to consist in a lesser form
of Good—a limiting, restricting and binding force without which you cannot
have form on the higher planes. It is only in the Worlds of Yetzirah and
Assiah that the analogue of this principle becomes absolutely Evil.
This
idea was expressed by the Gnostics when they said that the Achamoth2
attempted
to comprehend the Pleroma, and could not understand it, and from the grief
of her were formed the demons and the evil spirits.
If
therefore we seek to institute an analogy between the Microcosm it will be
seen that Nepheseh refers to Malkuth and
Assiah:
Ruach will refer to Yetzirah, which is the World of formation, therefore the
formative principle operating in Ruach gives form to all ideas, and is that
which weighs, balances and works in things. Ruach can also have an evil
side.
Neschamah
= the higher aspirations of the Soul,
which aspire to the ideal. There can be no positively evil side to Neschamah:—
there will only be a higher or lower aspiration.
If
the Ruach overpowers the Neschamah; if the Neschamah seeks the lower good,
both will be ruined. The following of a false idea cannot be said to be
exactly evil, but is a lower Good than it should be.
2 The Gnostics
called this Achamoth, but probably this was a corruption of Chokmutha. (Original
Note.)
Neschamah
will answer to the World of Briah : —
so
also will Chiah, which is allotted to Chokmah; but you cannot touch the
Yechidah part of you with your Ruach,—you must use the consciousness of
the Neschamah. This Yechidah will, together with Chiah, be the ‘Higher
Genius’, though this again will not be the highest self. For in and behind
Kether will reside a part of the being, which it is impossible to understand,
and which one can only aim at: this is the highest Soul, and answering to
the highest part of Yechidah, cannot be touched by Neschamah. There must be
a mode of transferring the synthesis of the consciousness making up the
Man,—to this upper Sephirah. The Fall, which cut away the higher from the
lower Sephiroth in Daath, was also our descent into this life, as it were,
from that Upper and Higher Soul. Therefore our object is to get into contact
with that again, which is only to be done through the Neschamah, which is
the Divine Mother of the Soul,—our Aima.
When
the Candidate enters the Vault and kneels down at the second point, he does
so at the centre of the Altar above the symbolic form of the Adept, who is
the synthesis of the sides of the Vault, whence he has come forth and
occupies a central position between the Kether and the World of the Shades,—
being there protected by the rising glory of the Golden Cross and the Rose.
Then this Prayer is said: ‘Unto Thee Sole Wise, Sole Mighty and Sole
Eternal One, be Praise and Glory for Ever’. Now it must be the
Macroprosopus, the Amen, who is addressed here,
—the
Lord of Kether who has permitted this aspirant who now kneeleth before Him
to penetrate thus far into the Sanctuary of His Mysteries (which is in the
centre of the Universe). Not unto us, but unto His Name be the Glory. (which
is the name JHVH with the addition of the letter Shin) ‘Let the influence
of Thy Divine Ones descend upon his head,’ (These Divine Ones are Angelic
forces, and the higher Self is in the nature of the Angelic Forces, as the
Highest Self is in that of the Divine One) ‘and teach him the value of
Self sacrifice, so that he shrink not in the hour of trial, but that thus
his name may be written on high’ (that is that the divine NAME formulated
in him may be brought up, as it were, to the heights) ‘and may stand in
the presences of the Holy One’ (which genius will be a mighty Angelic
power and in form far different from the petty personages we are here)
‘in that hour when the Son of Man is worked before the Lord of Spirits and
his name in the Presence of the Ancient of Days’.
This
will be the synthetical form of the Son of Man, the BEN ADAM, who is the
synthesis of the Ruach of the Universe: in other words, the allusion is to
the Great God of the World of Yetzirah or the Microprosopus, the Son of the
first Adam when he is invoked before the Lord of Spirits, which can but be
in Kether; and his name in the presence of the Ancient of Days. ‘He who is
ancient before the Gods, ancient before time, ancient before the formation
of the Worlds, He the ETERNAL AMEN— or even He who is before AMEN and whom
the plumes of Amen’s head-dress only touch’.
Now
the foregoing partly represents the mode in which the initiate becomes the
Adept: —the Ruach directed in accordance with the promptings of the
Neschamah keeps the Nephesch from being the ground of the Evil forces, and
the Neschamah brings it, the Ruach, into contact with the Chiah i.e. the
genius which stands in the presence of the Holy One
=
the Yechidah = the Divine
Self, which stands, as it were, before the Synthetical God of all things.
That is the only real way to become the Greatest Adept, and is directly
dependent on your life and your actions in life.
And
upon the lid of the Pastos this process is symbolically resumed: there we
see the suffering Man, pitiful and just, before whose justice and purity
the heads of the dragon fall back, but on the upper half there is depicted a
tremendous and a flaming God, the fully initiated Man,—the Adept who has
attained his Supreme Initiation.
It
will be noticed that in the 4° = 7°
Diagram the heads of the Dragon
have seized the Sephiroth but, as before remarked, on the
lid of the Pastos they are falling back from the figure on the Cross:
they are dispossessed only by the sacrifice of the lower Self.
Recall
to your mind that passage in one of the Eddas ‘I hung on the Tree three
days and three nights, wounded with a spear, myself a sacrifice offered to
my (highest) Self,—Odin unto Odin’.
It will furthermore be noticed that this way of looking at the matter
at once makes a reconciliation between the account in the Gospel of the
Christ as a calm, peaceful and pitiful Man, and the representation in the
Apocalypse of a tremendous and flaming God. A glance at the top half of the
Pastos shows the descent as a flaming sword which casts out the evil,—the
whole surrounding being white with brilliance. ‘And He had in His right
hand Seven Stars ... and the Seven
Stars represent the (Arch) Angels of
the Seven Churches’, or abodes in Assiah,
at His feet...
The
Life of Nations is like the Life of men;—they are born, become
intellectual, direct that intellect to black ends,—and, perish. But every
now and then at the end of certain periods, there are greater crises in the
World’s history than at other periods, and at such times it becomes
necessary that Sons of God should be incarnated to lead on the new era of
the Universe. I do not affirm that Christ was necessarily a man who obtained
Adeptship in that incarnation, but rather one who had obtained Adeptship and
come down to be incarnated again to lead up the new era. It was, however,
necessary in the crucifixion of so great a Soul,—so that the form might
actually suffer,—that everything except the Nephesch should be withdrawn
which would be the reason of the Cry of the
Nephesch,
‘My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?’ For the Nephesch which
was temporarily abandoned in this case was the cloak of that incarnation.
In other words, the only mortal part about the Man, or the God, and then
only after incurring that physical death, as it were, could the other divine
parts suddenly come down and make it the resurrected or glorified body,
which, according to the description, had after the Resurrection, the
apparent solidity of the ordinary body, and the faculties of the Spirit
body. Because if you can once get the great force of the Highest to send its
ray clean down through the Neschamah into the mind, and thence, into your
physical body, the Nephesch would be so transformed as to render you almost
like a God walking on this Earth.
The
Ruach, then, has to undergo a certain check and suffering in order to attain
its Apotheosis—which is the work of our Adept.
In
the fully Initiated Adept the Nephesch is so withdrawn into the Ruach that
even the lowest parts of these two principles cease to become allied to the
body and are drawn into the first six Sephiroth. This is again brought out
in the Obligation, where you say, ‘I pledge myself to hereby give myself
to the Great Work, which is so to exalt my lower nature that I may at length
become more than human and thus gradually raise and unite myself to my
higher and divine genius’. If it is a very great thing to unite
yourself
to the genius, how much more so must it be to unite yourself to the God
that is behind it!
Looking
at the Pastos, it will be seen that it represents a kind of triple cube, the
whole of which is placed between light and darkness. The lid is half light
and half darkness, the upper end is the symbol of light, and the lower, the
symbol of darkness,— while the sides have the colours placed between the
Light and the Darkness. At the head is placed a Golden Greek Cross, representing
the Spirit and’ the Elements, and a Rose of 7 times 7 petals, and there
are four rays which go out from it. But at the foot,—that which the feet
rest on as if they were exalted by it,— is the Cross exalted on a pedestal
of Three Steps, viz, the Obligation Cross. This latter is also to an
extent represented on the top in the crucified figure, and symbolises the
voluntary sacrifice of the lower Will, which is incidental to allying the
intellect with the higher aspirations and to the establishment of your consciousness
therein : — thus if the ordinary
consciousness were centred in the Ruach you could touch the Neschamah, while
if it was in the latter you could touch the Genius.
Now
this transference of consciousness from Ruach to Neschamah is one object
of the ceremonial of the 5°=6° Ritual:—
it is a thing which will be more readily understood when the Grade of Adept
Adeptus Minor is reached. It is especially intended to effect the change of
the consciousness into the Neschamah and there are three places where is can
take place. The first is when the Aspirant is on the Cross, because he is so
exactly fulfilling the Symbol of the abnegation of the lower Self and the
union with the Higher Self: — and
also there is the invocation of \the Angel H.V.A.
The
second place is when he touches the Rose on the representative of C,R. in
the Vault, when he has taken on himself the symbols of suffering and self
sacrifice, and says that his victory is in the Cross of the Rose.
The
third place is when he enters the Vault in the Third point and kneels down
and the Chief Adept says ‘I am the Reconciler with the Ineffable: I am the
dweller of the Invisible: let the White Brilliance of the divine Spirit
descend.’
In
these three cases a possible exchange of the consciousness from the Ruach
into the Neschamah is initiated, so that whether he understands it, or not,
the Aspirant actually approaches his own Genius.
(There
are some cases where the Genius may have attained a height and fallen :
—
that is when, having touched the Ruach in one incarnation, it has
been so wrought upon by the sufferings of the lower part that it has for the
moment consented to slacken the tension of their union.
Now
if the Genius part, instead of identifying itself with the God part,
identifies itself too much with the Neschamah, a fall of the Genius takes
place: which is not altogether evil, but may entail a certain evil effect.)
The
most complete point of the actual contact is in the third point, where the
Chief Adept says : — ‘I am the
Resurrection and the Life! He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die’:
i.e. if you can live at will in the Neschamah and touch the Genius, you will
have made a great step towards the divine Elixir, for you will be worthy to
sit with the Gods, and that which you drink of is the real Elixir, the
Elixir of the Spirit of Life.
Then
the Second Adept says : — ‘Behold
the Image of the Justified One, crucified on the Cross of the Infernal
Rivers of death’, and the Third Adept shows deific antithesis,—the
exaltation into the Divine. Then the Chief Adept says again :
—
‘I am the First and the Last’—the Aleph and the Tau and the Yod
and Hé final of the sacred Name,—’I am He that liveth but was dead, and
behold I am alive for evermore, Amen’, that is using the name of the
Egyptian Deity AMON, or Amen, who represents the Ideal God force,—’and I
hold the Keys of Death and of Hell’ (Because if you stand on Malkuth and
keep your touch with the Gods, you hold the Keys of that which is below)—
But the lower self all this time has an existence, for it certainly is not
quite eliminated : — it is cast
forth from the Nephesch, yet preserving a link with it, it goes down into
the Qlipoth, and in this connection, it is well to observe that what may be
really Evil on this Earth plane, may be even as a God among the Demons.
The
words ‘He descended into Hell’, have such a significance. This Third
point then represents the attainment of the Divine :
—
and the Second Adept proceeds to say :
—
‘He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit says unto the
Assemblies’ (i.e. in Malkuth) and if the Voice of the Divine is found in
Malkuth it must find its echo in the realms beneath.
Then
follows the exaltation into Neschamah of the Consciousness of the Chief
Adept, whose Voice seems as if he were symbolically standing with his head
in Atziluth, whence it reverberates through the Worlds, sinking down below
Malkuth unto the dominion of the Shells and he says :
—
‘For I know that my Redeemer liveth’ (the Redeemer is he that
brings again) ‘and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth. I
am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No Man cometh unto the Father but by me
etc.’ This whole passage of the Chief Adept is formed of a collection of
utterances, which are, as it were, the speeches of the Great Gods, which he
can only hear when he is still further exalted into Kether. ‘I am the
Way, the Truth and the Life’, is the reflected Triad. No Man cometh unto
the Father, but by me. Then the Neschamah speaks; down to ‘I have entered
into the Invisible’. Then it is as if the Consciousness went into the
Genius, which says ‘I am the Sun in his rising, I have passed through the
hour of Cloud and Night’.
Then
follows: — ‘I am Amon the
concealed one, the opener of the Day,’—like the Great God in Atziluth—’I
am Osiris Onnofris, the Crucified One,’ who is perfected in the balance
and risen above all considerations that come from Maya, or illusion, and who
only seeks the eternal life from above, and then, as if in a supreme moment
‘I am the Lord of Life, triumphant over death, there is no part of me that
is not of the Gods’. (That is the voice of Kether.) This again is followed
by a synthetical culmination, as if all the divine ones united in the
utterance: ‘I am the Preparer of the Pathway, the Rescuer unto the Light!
Out of the Darkness let the Light arise!’
Whereupon
the Chief Adept says : —
‘I am
the Reconciler with the Ineffable! I am the dweller of the Invisible: let
the White Brilliance of the Divine Spirit descend’.
The
Aspirant is now told to rise an Adeptus Minor of the Rose of Ruby and the
Cross of Gold, in the sign of Osiris slain,— and then ‘We receive thee
as an Adeptus Minor in that sign of Rectitude and Self Sacrifice.’
The
affirmation of the three parts is then proceeded with.— The Chief Adept
says:
‘Be
thy Mind opened unto the Higher,’ Second:
‘Be thy heart the centre of Light’,
and Third: ‘Be thy body the
Temple of the Rosy Cross’.
The
Pass Word is then announced, which is formed from the Mystic Number of the
Grade, 21 ,—this Pass Word,
however is the divine Name of Kether : —
and
it is used as the Pass Word of this Grade of Tiphereth in order to affirm
the connection between the two.
Then
the Chief Adept says that the Key Word is I.N.R.I. The three Adepts
themselves represent Chesed, Geburah and Tiphereth. The Creator, the
Destroyer and the Sacrificed One, ISIS, APOPHIS and OSIRIS
=
the name lAO. The Symbol, of Osiris slain is the Cross; v is the sign
of the mourning of Isis: the sign of Typhon and Apophis: x the sign of
Osiris risen: = LVX, the Light of
the Cross, or that which symbolises the way into the Divine through
Sacrifice. So that the symbolism in its entirety represents the exaltation
of the Initiate into the Adept.
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